Wednesday, 17 April 2013

A Post I Wish I'd Never Have To Write

It’s April 17. As Monday was the third Monday in
this month, i.e. Patriots’ Dayin Massachusetts, on April 15 the Boston Marathon was held. It’s been held since 1897. Monday’s race, however, will go down in history for all the wrong
reasons.

Depending on when you’re reading this, this will
either be current news or archive material. The short summary is that two bombs went off
near the Finishing Line, killing three spectators and injuring 170 people.
The blasts have not been claimed and there is no indication as to the
perpetrators or their motives.

Those questions may have been answered by now. Either way, this post is not
about questions or answers. Events like these prompt enough ill-informed (at
best) speculation as it is: I am not going to add to it. I just want to add a
brief outline of how I, as a runner, reacted to the news.

News that I heard whilst staying on campus at Warwick University, by the
way, ahead of a conference on Computer-Aided Design, Product Lifecycle Management and 3D printing. I’d got back to my room after a Reception event,
hopefully the last such event at which I shall deny myself a couple of beers.
I’d had three pints of orange juice & sodas whilst my guest, a client from
California but of Massachusetts roots with Irish background, had enjoyed three
pints of Guinness. I checked my work e-mail and saw the following note:

Seemed an odd comment… why wouldn’t he be OK? Fit lad, experienced runner (although I have since learnt this was his first marathon)… Why send an evening e-mail on the
topic? I replied, highlighting the event’s qualifying times and how he’d have
to be OK just to make it*…

…then I switched over to Twitter. Saw a tweet from fellow nutterSimon in which he said he was
going to bed because he’d read/seen enough. Saw more tweets. Realised something
had happened…

…and switched over to the BBC News Channel: at first online, then on the TV. It
had taken me a few media but finally the news dawned on me. And hit me. Hard.
You may recall that I’d been to Boston for work last November and enjoyed (yes,
‘enjoyed’) a great day’s running there ahead of a week of meetings. On the whole, I ran
27.4mi that day. That’s right: 44.12km, 27.4mi. Non-consecutive, I hasten to
add. In fact, it was broken down into seven runs:
1. 5.00k run from hotel to the Freedom Trail Run starting point on Boston
Common
2. 6.27k Freedom Trail Run
3. 5.00k run back to the hotel
4. 2.37k run back towards Downtown Boston
5. 2.02k run brought to a halt by the sight of “Cheers” (of course I had to!)
6. 7.18k run out to Cambridge – fortunately there were water fountains along the
way, post-pint
7. 13.28k run back from Cambridge to my hotel

Yours truly, on Boston Common -November 11, 2012

Hang on… that only adds up to 41.12k… I’m 3k short… yet I went over it time and
again at the time… anyway, let’s not dwell on the details.
I have tried to compare my RunKeeper records with the official route map. I can’t
make full sense of it but one thing I am sure about: at several points on my run I
was very, very close to the marathon route. In particular to the finishing
line.

That’s a chilling feeling, not dissimilar to what I felt on 9/11, a day I
watched unfold with memories of a trip to N.Y.C. and to the top of the Twin
Towers just over a year old backed up by a framed photo of the Empire State Building behind the
television.

I’ve had a go at a lot of sports in my time, with varying degrees of success. I
was once Men’s Singles Champion at Portishead Lawn Tennis Club, I’ve swam a
couple of 5k Swimathons, I got to ‘Promozione’ level in Italian amateur
football… but, on the whole, I’ve never been amazing at owt. Especially
cricket. But boy did I give that a good go. And actually, the sport I was
probably naturally best at was skiing, so my lot was to live on the
Mediterranean coast. Should have tried water-skiing, I guess: it was a
waterskiing instructor that a lass from Sheffield fell for all those years ago,
the start of a holiday romance of which I am living proof. Anyway…

Let me tell you this: I’ve never felt part of a community as much as I
do now as a runner. And I say this as someone who typically runs alone. It
doesn't matter: whether you're running one mile, 26.2miles, 100miles... you’re
a runner. We're all on the same side: we run together, not against each other.
The nature of the sport makes that possible, it’s no stain on other, more
confrontational sports. And I can do confrontational/adversarial/attritional as
good as the next guy: heck, I’m from Yorkshire. I had a tennis shirt especially
made which reads “If it's not about winning, why do we keep the score?” (a
Vince Lombardi quote) – you can buy
yours here! But runners…

…even
though I run alone, I have my Twitter community. When I cross a runner, whether
I’m running myself or just meandering along, I feel they’re on my team. I smile
in their direction, I know what they’re going through and I’ve an idea of what’s
motivating them, even if I have no idea as to whether they’re on a recovery
run, a long run, a speedwork run… or whether they’ve just nipped out for 30’
and aren’t thinking in those terms. This is something I’ve spoken about before
on here: how it’s so much easier to empathise
for runners because factors such as distance / conditions / climb are so much
easier to grasp than the quality of a tennis opponent, the combined ability of
a football team you’ve come up against… how sharing such experiences is particularly important in the context of friendships, especially male friendships… we can all read “Born
To Run” or “Keep
On Running” and “get it”, without team colours blurring our views. It’s
just the way it is – and not just for me. It’s the reason all runners are
hurting for Boston. Not that hurting for Boston is something over which runners
enjoy a monopoly: it is a human tragedy more so than a sporting one. But it is
a tragedy that struck at the very heart of what we do. Not that you have to
race to be a runner: but, if you’ve ever crossed that line, whether at the end
of a 5k or (I presume) a marathon, you will know how it feels. Sadly, running a big-city marathon knowing members of your family are waiting for you at the end may never feel the same: even in the absence of fear, there will be room for memories. But we keep on running. It’s what we do.

A kind and clever soul has started a social media campaign inviting London Marathon
runners to cross the finishing line on Sunday with #handsoverhearts:

I’m not
running London. But, as I might have mentioned, I’ll be running Manchester the following week, a fat lad from Sheffield
seeking to conquer t’other side o’t Pennines in his first marathon. And I will cross that finishing
line with my hands over my heart. I will do so in Manchester and, should I ever
be stupid enough to contemplate a second marathon, a third… you know, should I
ever be stupid to go down this route again, I shall do so forevermore. We run as
a team, we win as a team – and we hurt as a team. In the words of Twitter -
#runnersunite.

One last comment. One of the three fatalities
was an Martin
Richard, an 8-year old boy who was cheering on his dad in his hometown race.
His sister Jane has lost a leg. No doubt many other children were hurt but
these are the names and faces that have captured the public imagination and
every front page I’ve seen today, not least because this touching photo of Martin has emerged:

If any photo comes to epitomise this tragedy, may it be this one - not a gruesome shot

As you may recall, I’m running Manchester for Sheffield’s Children’s Hospital Charity: indeed, many
thanks to the forty-six donors who’ve sponsored me to tune of £563.62 so far, carrying
me comfortably beyond my £500 target. Feel free to join them, of course. But I’m not
mentioning this for the money: I’m mentioning it because of that connection
I feel with the Children’s Hospital, borne out of what they did for me, for
my cousin Gabs, for what they tried to do for my younger brother… and because of the hurt I still feel. It’s a connection
that extends to children beyond that hospital and beyond my city, as per my
reference to a friend’s son in a recent
post. I will think about my brothers and about Thomas as I run Manchester:
and now I will think about Martin, too. And I will cross that line with my arms
firmly across my heart.That’s all for today, Folk. But, unusually for me, I’ll be back within 24
hours. And I’ll be in a more buoyant, defiant mood. I have to be!Yes, big day tomorrow. Not for the world at large: but for little me, yes.What do you mean, ‘why’? Surely you
know?!?Ah well… you’ll just have to drop by to find out. I won’t waffle on and on and
on – I promise.
Oh, and I’m still only halfway through “Keep
On Running”, which fellow Manchester runner Phillip Kelly kindly
recommended. He mentioned it on Twitter and, within thirty seconds, I’d ordered
it on my phone. Whether you’re a runner or someone trying to fathom our
madness, you should do the same.

* the colleague who e-mailed me on Monday night has since reached our former colleague on LinkedIn. I was genuinely not worried because I expected him to have been long over the finishing line by the time the bombs went off: in my mistaken mind he was a hardened marathon runner, not a marathon virgin like yours truly. Here is that brief exchange:

> this was the only way I could contact you Joe - I hope you are OK? Sad day in
Boston. Crazy world.

> Yes we are ok, I was
30 seconds past finish line when bomb exploded.

I’d better not write down the words that came out of my mouth when I read that. Chilling. Joe’s story has since been told onKXAN.com.

1 comment:

Lovely, Giacomo. We know Joe. My brother also knows Nicole Gross whose photograph in a state of schock, in the midst of blood on the sidewalk, has made an impression. Both she and her sister were serious athletes, serious runners, and seriously hurt. (Her sister has had part of her leg amputated and both are still in hospital.) It is a very small world. The human world. The runner's world. I know exactly what you mean about that sense of community, which is unique to that sport. Runners can be very competitive--your quote from a Georgia football coach would surely have resonated with my high school cross country team's top runners--but they are most competitive with themselves and very much supportive of others. Sadly, there have been many incidents of terror throughout my lifetime, but this one definitely felt connected to me in a way that I haven't always felt. What can we do? Keep living. And running. Thanks for the very nice post.

About Me

Made in Sheffield, exported worldwide. Grew up near Genoa, Italy; returned to Sheffield for Uni (with some time in Nice thrown in for good measure) before falling South and then stumbling West to London, Slough and now North Somerset. Any further West and I'm going to get awfully wet. The 176m separating me from Sheffield generally shrink when I'm online.